If you like videogames, do not read this review. Do yourself a favor and go buy this game right now!
That is the bottom line for this amazing game. For those of you who would like to know more, continue reading.
Arkham City is the best superhero game ever created. You are in Batman’s playground. Anything and everything you could of hoped for to be in a Batman game is here. Batman has many gadgets at his disposal and makes traversing the city a joy. Arkham City is an open world game that, in terms of game mechanics, plays out more like Zelda than GTA. Arkham City is a hub world where each villain’s location is similar to a dungeon. The storyline feels like it was taken straight from a comic book, which is good and bad. I wanted the story element to be on par with the Dark Knight movie, but what we have here is still worthy of a good Batman story. Almost all the classic villain’s play some form of role in this game. I don’t want to give to much away, but I was surprised a lot.
Batman getting his groove on
Gameplay
Controlling Batman is a breeze and feels just right. Seeing as how I’ve never played Arkham Asylum, their was a slight learning curve. After some time with the game, I wouldn’t want Batman to control any other way. Arkham City boosts the best combat system I have seen, and I don’t say that lightly. Two buttons are mainly used; one for attack and one for countering. You can string combos together for more experience points and all in all it looks awesome. Batman’s gadgets can also be used during a brawl, but I didn’t find them too useful. As you fight and do side quests you’ll get enough experience to level up. This will bring up a menu and you choose what you want to level up; Batman’s gadgetry, combat, and bat suit.
Batman is also equipped with a detective vision. This allows you to see enemies through walls with detailed information on them. It also helps you solve crimes by showing you bullet and blood trails. It will also show you a bosses weak spot and give you clues for riddler trophies, basically its used a lot. This was a problem in the Arkham Asylum because you could literally play the whole game with detective vision turned on. Arkham City rectifies this by automatically turning it off when entering a new area and by not allowing you to see your next objective with it turned on.
Early on, Batman can dispatch foes with ease and I was worried that the game was going to be too easy, but this is not the case, as the difficulty will ramp up pretty quickly. Thugs will start carrying guns, shields, knives, electrified batons, and more. Each weapon requires a different strategy.Let me paint you a picture: You come to a room inside a specific enemies lair, you turn on detective vision and notice their are 8 armed thugs patrolling the area. 4 have machine guns and thermal vision, 2 have shields, and 2 have electrified batons. You want to get to a good vantage point so you grapple to a stone gargoyle statue You have all of Batman’s gadgetry , and you can get to any spot in this room with ease. How do you take out every thug without alerting the other enemies around? This is why this game is so good. You can approach a situation the way you want. Do you drop a smoke bomb and take on everyone at once? You better be good at combat because Batman can only take a few bullets. Do you drop proximity freeze mines? Disable an enemies weapon with the disruptor? – watch them try to use their gun and panic when it doesn’t work, this is always good for a laugh, or you could stealthily go around the room taking them out one at a time. The list is endless. This brings me to another point that i didn’t really expect, the enemy AI is good and all but what really drew me into the experience was the way the enemies react to batman. You can smell their fear as they slowly creep around corners after finding an unconsious body from a nearby attack. They question where Batman is because they swear that they saw him, and even in detective mode you can see what mental state they’re in. Some enemies will taunt Batman and tell him he’s too scared to come face them, they will yell and tell other thugs to help look for him. It just feels like one big interactive experience.
The Riddler trophies are back and they are everywhere. I don’t care for collecting specific items in open world games, it usually feels like a cheap excuse to extend the replay value, but here it’s great. Rocksteady actual took the time to make collecting the trophies creative and enjoyable and when you collect enough of them it starts opening up hostage rescue sequences reminisant of the Saw movies. This leads me to the side missions. Their are a lot of them and they’re not just throw away either. The side missions are fully fleshed out mini stories that involve major characters. I don’t want to spoil too much, but one side mission involves you chasing ringing pay phones around the city. Another side mission invoves you seeking out and destroying titan containers. Catwoman also plays an interesting role. I would definitely recommend downloading the catwoman dlc before you start the story mode , as it lets you play out important story elements. These little intermissions offer a nice change of pace from the rest of the story. They don’t last very long and they’re not at all obtrusive, although, each time you switch to Catwoman your left on a cliff hanger, and sometimes I would rather see what happens next. Catwoman gets around the city with her whip and climbing ability and it doesn’t feel as intuitive as Batmans Grapple. Nevertheless, its still highly operational and you can see the difference between a rich, highly trained professional and a poor slum dog woman.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics in Arkham City are excellent. The city itself is the highlight here. While not as big as a GTA city, it does its job. It’s always night, but thats ok, thats what works for this type of game. The city is highly detailed and every area you move into has character. Every section of the city is designed specific to that character. I don’t want to give too much away but ,you’ll know when your entering The Joker’s territory. One of the best parts about the game is to climb to the top of one of the highest buildings and marvel at how beautiful it looks with all the action going on. The character models are nearly perfect, you wouldn’t want them to look any different. Even Batman shows some wear and tear as you progress through the game. The animation is also great. Watching Batman pummel 20 thugs is a sight to behold.
The music in the game is good and I seem to really only notice it when the action picks up or when an intense scene is unfolding, otherwise it plays quietly in the background. The voice acting is on par with most big budget movies. Mark Hamill is casted as The Joker once again. He does an excellent job and makes The Joker sound as insane and crazy as he is. The Penguin seems to have taken on a different accent, but I like the change as it gives him more of an edge. Batman’s voice is accurately depicted and sounds like a mix between the Dark Knight and The Animated Series. One thing to mention though, their is a lot of chatter. Sometimes it can seem overwhelming, as you’ll here conversations from random thugs, the radio that picks up a lot of chatter, and then the major villains will have dialog over a loud speaker. This is small though when compared to the big picture, as the production is of very high caliber.
Conclusion
When you’ve finished the main story mode, you unlock New Game Plus, which starts you at the beginning with all your gadgetry. The enemies are also harder and they won’t display the icon over head when they’re going to strike. Also, their are the challenge maps, which will have you choose from Batman or Catwoman your then faced with a room full of thugs and you have to take them out accordingly. Some challenge maps you’ll have to use stealth and others require quick reflexes to take out 20 to 30 enemies. Arkham City really is one of my favorite games of all time. This game definitely lives up to the hype and then some. That’s not to say this game is perfect, it does have its faults. Not all the major villains are as fleshed out as they could be. In fact, some of them are introduced early on and then forgotten about. Their is also any overwhelming sense of objectives on your map at all times this can be considered good or bad really. Towards the end of the game their is some backtracking. These are all minor gripes when looking at the whole game. The bottom line is that this game makes you feel like your batman better than any other medium and that is something that has to be seen to be believed.
